Grouper Users - Open Discussion List

[John Schrader <>]

This is a great conversation..

For those of us running in AWS cloud, AWS has released "SecretsManager" [1]

SecretsManager opens up some interesting possibilities for both EC2 instances and containers(tasks) running in ECS.

As a POC, I've created an elConfig class (thanks to Chris for the capability) that retrieves values for hibernate properties:

hibernate.connection.url.sm.elConfig            = ${edu.internet2.middleware.grouperClient.config.SecretsManagerElClass.getSecret('/grouper/dev','url')}
hibernate.connection.url                        = "$$hibernate.connection.url.sm$$

hibernate.connection.username.sm.elConfig       = ${edu.internet2.middleware.grouperClient.config.SecretsManagerElClass.getSecret('/grouper/dev','username')}
hibernate.connection.username                   = $$hibernate.connection.username.sm$$

hibernate.connection.password.sm.elConfig       = ${edu.internet2.middleware.grouperClient.config.SecretsManagerElClass.getSecret('/grouper/dev','password')}
hibernate.connection.password                   = $$hibernate.connection.password.sm$$

from SecretsManager.

Read/Decrypt access to the `/grouper/dev` secret is controlled by the role associated with an EC2 instance or ECS task.

Using a role helps with the initial credential bootstrapping and allows for immutability.

-John

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/secrets-manager/

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 1:27 PM, Jack Stewart <> wrote:

Everyone,

Thank you all for your wonderful feedback!  I hope the discussion continues.

A few thoughts:

- Although Grouper can run with environment variables, it would take a lot of time to convert, and each major upgrade could possibly be made tricky as a result.  Or am I being too paranoid?

- I don’t quite see consensus on a clear way forward.  All the information presented here has been helpful, though.  I will check what others are doing locally.

Jack

-- 

Jack Stewart

Solutions Architect, Identity and Access Management

University of Michigan

4251 Plymouth Road

Ann Arbor, Michigan 48105-3640

(734) 764-0853

On Apr 26, 2018, at 12:39 PM, Hyzer, Chris <> wrote:

Fyi grouper config can happen in env vars, also the sources.xml can be migrated to subject.properties

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Grouper+configuration+overlay#Grouperconfigurationoverlay-Environmentvariables

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Grouper+sources.xml+conversion+to+subject.properties

Thanks
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: [] On Behalf Of Christopher Hubing
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 1:00 PM
To: Jack Stewart <>
Cc: ; csp study grouper <>
Subject: Re: [grouper-users] Containerized Grouper and Secrets


For I2, we are storing secret things in an encrypted S3 bucket. The build
host has access to read from it, and then pushes the images to a private
Elastic Container Repo. The containers run in ECS.

Here's an example of our Dockerfile for the UI:
https://github.internet2.edu/gist/chubing/c4e663ab5a39fb73dccdcd748a92c5fe

Since the new Grouper container is pushed to Dockerhub (and have tags for
patches), it should make it pretty easy to manange (hopefully).

-c

On Wed, 25 Apr 2018, Jack Stewart wrote:

Everyone,

I would like to start out by saying that the new role-based Grouper containers are great!  It was very easy to build the images.

Now my question is, what are other schools doing with regard to their Grouper configurations?  Are you "burning them into" storing them in the containers themselves, or are you using

secrets?

Converting an application like Grouper to use secrets would be a LOT of work.  Effectively, you would need to convert all of the settings to environment variables.  How would you deal with

the sources.xml files which, by design, need to be customized?

Many thanks,

Jack

--

Jack Stewart

Solutions Architect, Identity and Access Management

University of Michigan

4251 Plymouth Road

Ann Arbor, Michigan 48105-3640

(734) 764-0853

--

John Schrader

Identity and Access Management

Office of Information Technologies

University of Notre Dame

EVERYTHING SHOULD BE MADE AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE, BUT NOT ANY SIMPLER

—ALBERT EINSTEIN